I've been covering the business of news, information and entertainment in one form or another for more than 10 years. In February 2014, I moved to San Francisco to cover the tech beat. My primary focus is social media and digital media, but I'm interested in other aspects, including but not limited to the sharing economy, lifehacking, fitness & sports tech and the evolving culture of the Bay Area. In past incarnations I've worked at AOL, Conde Nast Portfolio, Radar and WWD. Circle me on Google+, follow me on Twitter or send me tips or ideas at jbercovici@forbes.com.

Rumored SoundCloud Deal Points The Way Forward For Twitter

The trouble with creating something truly novel is it’s hard for people to think or talk about it without resorting to imperfect analogies. In the six months since it went public, TwitterTwitter has alternately profited and suffered from Wall Street’s belief that it’s basically like Facebook, or should be.

The dizzying run-up in its share price in December was clearly premised on the notion that Twitter would eventually amass a billion users, like Facebook; the long slide since then is rooted in frustration that it’s not making faster progress toward that supposed goal.

In recent weeks, the company has indicated it has a plan for getting off this roller coaster. As detailed by Slate’s Will Oremus, it involves discouraging comparisons to Facebook and encouraging investors to think of Twitter as something more akin to an old-fashioned media network.

Media networks, be they TV broadcasters or web publishers, differ from social networks in a couple of key regards. One is metrics. No one talks about how many users NPR or Buzzfeed has; it’s all about audience. Twitter’s audience exceeds its monthly user base of 255 million people by orders of magnitude; in just two days after the Oscars, about 3.3 billion people saw tweets about the show, CEO Dick Costolo bragged on the company’s most recent earnings call.

Media networks also aren’t subject to network effects that accelerate upward or downward momentum, at least not in anything like the same way. A social network that’s not growing strongly is instantly under suspicion of becoming the next MySpace. A TV network can a down season in the ratings and it’s not the end of the world. Encouraging investors to think of Twitter as a broadcasting service of sorts could take some of the volatility out of the stock by making it seems like less of an all-or-nothing proposition.

What would a Twitter that thought of itself as a media network look like? Very much like it already does. For a majority of users, it’s already a one-way medium: According to third-party statistics, more than 40% of accounts have never sent a tweet, while another 30% have sent fewer than 10.

You’d also expect to see an increase in quality content over time. Just as cable networks like AMC and FX started out with schedules full of local public access shows and reruns before investing in high-quality original programming, Twitter can make more money from advertising the more professional-grade content it brings onto its platform. Again, that’s exactly what it’s been doing through its partnerships with broadcasters and news publishers, including its Amplify program for sponsored video clips.

Today’s news that Twitter is in talks to acquire SoundCloud, the Germany-based music sharing service, would be a huge step in that direction. Whereas Vine, the short-form video app, was and is something of an esoteric product, SoundCloud is full of professional music by brand-name acts (albeit not all of it put there with their consent).

Right now, SoundCloud is just for on-demand listening. But it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which it carried livestreamed concerts, as YouTube and Daily Motion now do, with fans congregating on Twitter to discuss the shows in real time. It’s an interesting opportunity — certainly a lot more interesting than rehashing the same tired Facebook comparisons.

(I covered some of these points on a recent episode of the PBS MediaShift MediaTwits podcast. The clip is below.)

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